Without viewing the place first, PC and CA bought a house in the Pentlands. On arrival at their new home, they discovered that it was an empty field of in the middle of nowhere.
They had been swindled into spending their savings on a lumpy stretch of bog.
My mother’s Volvo was not a self-driving car, yet when the whole the family was crammed into the back seat, we treated it as such. I was terrified as we sped through the countryside at top speeds, praying that the car would know how to negotiate bends in the road.
By the time that we reached our destination, I had managed to climb into the driver’s seat and parked the car (albeit badly) in the town square. It was a very tight fit next to a huge blue van, so I was not surprised when a plain-clothed policeman approached me. He couldn’t understand my pleas to be treated kindly – because he was not an officer of the law after all, but the family solicitor.
The solicitor walked us through town and up to his magnificent office. This castle-like building offered impressive views of the north east coast of the Isle of Skye, including the Old Man of Storr, the Kilt Rock and the Quiraing. I was less impressed, however, when I saw the outfit of my middle sister. She seemed to have raided my 1990s wardrobe to find something suitable to wear at the meeting. The crumpled skirt and top, combined with dusty navy blue sling-back sandals, did not fit the bill.
Homeless, I lived in my car.
When I was fortunate to find an empty flat, I would sneak in there to use the shower and prepare for job interviews.
One day a young woman asked about my prospects of employment. ‘Did you ever take any exams?’ she asked, assuming that I had led a life deprived of opportunity. I started my response by listing my 11 O levels.
On the spot I volunteered to give the address at the end of the University reunion dinner. What better subject than the sexual exploits of two girls from my hall of residence, now respectable grown women, and seated before me in the audience with their long-term partners?
First there was Susan, and what a slag was she! Indeed, her exploits were so varied it was difficult to present a coherent narrative of her undergraduate bedtime adventures. For JL it was much easier: she had a boyfriend at home and one on campus, and neither knew of the other’s existence.
By the end of my speech Susan was in tears. Her friends shouted ‘Shame!” in my face for ruining her evening.
I approached JL afterwards to check her reaction to my revelations. She did not seem to be bothered at all. Instead, she and her husband told me how they made their millions from the first mass market non-alcoholic ‘wine’ of their invention, and their recent purchase of the island of Lorne of the west coast of Scotland.
It took ages to find Hugh Grant (my husband) afterwards in the sprawling Sheraton Hotel. No longer A list, he had been allocated a poky room that looked out onto the car park at the back of the building. He had hoped that I would join him for supper, but I was so late returning from the reunion that he had resorted to a single person’s room service supper of stringy beef.
I wanted to give my husband my full attention that evening, but LF phoned in a panic about a lump in her upper arm that was ‘definitely not a muscle’. So almost as soon as I had reached Hugh, I headed off again to comfort my friend.
Our large group left the nightclub and wandered down the strange high street, only to see an old-school Routemaster bus coming over the hill. We ran excitedly to board our night-bus.
I knew we needed to change to another bus, but when I turned around to ask everyone for further details, I was the only person on board. It was that strange time of day. Some people were coming home from a night out, some were starting a new day. But none of them could tell me where to catch the bus. Eventually, I walked into an old building to ask the concierge, only to find her deep in conversation Mark Kermode. My heart leapt with excitement. Too shy to even say hello, I hid in the shadows until he left, pulling his suitcase behind him.
Eventually, I found Parson’s Green tube station, which was built into a mountain, and I was on my way home.
Although we shared the same living space, our marriage was over, and TPR couldn’t care less if I went home with a strange man after the dance.
My ‘man’ wasn’t that strange, although it had to be said that his dancing style was rather ‘jumpy’. Neal was one of my former students, and I happily took his hand at the end of the evening for the walk back to his place (or so I thought).
It was quite trek up the up to the loch, and I was grateful for my hill training on Edinburgh’s Dublin Street. However, things turned nasty when we came face to face with a fat green and red devil, who chased us all the way back down to the town again in the dark.
As well as the occasional whale, it was now possible to watch polar bear families resident on mini icebergs, just off the East Lothian coast (Scotland).
TPR and I brought a live souvenir home from our holiday: a pet fox.
It was so tame that it would roll on to its back to invite us to tickle his tummy, just like a wee ginger dog.
I waited with a couple who had travelled all the way from the most southerly tip of Ireland to join the wildlife photography course. It was good to have their company, but where was our coach?
When we heard that there would be a further delay to the transport, we left our belongings at the bus stop and wandered up the hills for a short walk. Within minutes I was panicking about my expensive camera at the side of the road.
‘Everyone is so wealthy here that nobody will steal it’, said the woman. ‘It will be fine’.
‘But what if I see something that I would like to photograph?’ I protested.
At that point I caught in my peripheral vision the brush of a long heavy tail in the undergrowth at the side of the road. A trio of otters was out to play! They were so close that I was able to whip out my iPhone and take the most astonishing shots of otters in the wild.
Dreamaticus 
Lewd comments in bed (Rousse)
AC, JM and I sat in bed working our way through the lewd comments on my professional WordPress site.
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